Singer from the Sea (36 page)

What time she was not exploring, she spent in the lovely bath. In either case, lest she make another mistake in conversation that would give pretense away, she stayed as far as possible from Mrs. Fentwig, who was an avid talker and a keen questioner.

On the fourth day, quite early in the morning, they left their horses to be used by Fentwig until Garth’s return, and departed on
Unlikely
as she plowed sturdily away toward the south. After a precautionary lap or two about the deck, wings flapping and voice raised in imprecation against all evils of air, water, or reef, Wigham settled to the wheel. The winds were brisk, and though both Garth and Genevieve were arrant amateurs, their help was needed to set the sails. Genevieve surprised herself by learning first to keep her footing on a surface which tipped
in every direction, sometimes in several of them at once, and then by learning what each rope was for and how each of them worked. By afternoon she was able to haul on this one or let go that one at command. So the first day passed swiftly by. Though Genevieve found herself sore from the unaccustomed bracing and bending, reaching, and pulling, by evening she was becoming adjusted to the rocking and pitching of the little boat. By nightfall they were at the southern end of the Tail, ready to run along the Rump on the morning. They anchored in a small bay open to the southeast, and when dark fell, they could see the lights of Eales, where the Covenantor’s Tribunal stood, its watch towers blooming in the southern dark like so many stars.

During the night, Genevieve dreamed of swimming. It seemed to her that she swooped and soared, and she woke with the feeling still strong for the ship was indeed swooping as it moved. With momentary panic, she realized that it was no longer anchored but was speedily going somewhere. She crawled from her cubby into the cabin, where Garth and Wigham lay exhaustedly asleep, and when she went between them and struggled her way onto the deck, she had to cling to the railing for dear life. She could not find the land that had lain close on the evening before. Spray washed over her, wetting her to her skin and the pitching, roiling ship seemed to be determined to go in three or more directions at once!

She opened her mouth to shout for the menfolks and half turned toward the cabin to summon them, but was frozen in place, clinging to the rail, as she stared across a narrow river of water between the ship and something huge and marvelous that paralleled their track. It was golden. It glowed. Though it lay almost entirely within the water, protruding only slightly above the wave-roughened surface, it was many times larger than the ship. It rolled away from her, disclosing amid wrinkled lids one great eye that stared across at her. The eye stared, the boat flew, the night roared with wind, and the long moment slipped by until the golden being rolled away from her and slipped beneath the waves once more, momentarily waving its enormous tail behind it. From below, coming up at her
from the planks beneath her feet, Genevieve heard the sound of its singing.

Without any decision at all, from long training in the cellars of Langmarsh House, she leaned over the rail and sang a reply into the night, the sound going out over the water, a higher echo of the sound from below. She stretched across the rail, far, far out, putting out one hand to feel the spray, feeling the call of the depths, wanting to let go, leap out …

Then the sail flapped angrily, the boat heeled. Genevieve staggered and shouted in sudden fear. The men, thus wakened, stumbled onto the deck and soon found the broken anchor rope, nibbled along its underwater length and at one point chewed through.

“What did this?” cried Garth.

“Damfino,” muttered Wigham, not meeting his eyes “Not anything I’ve seen, I’ll tell you. Rope-eaters we have now! It an’t enough they chew the planks, now they’re eating the ropes.”

“You should’ve used chain,” growled Garth.

“Well, and if it was cheap, I would,” growled Wigham in return. “But chain is metal and metal an’t cheap, and we’ve never had rope-eaters before. Now an’t this a pickle?” He muttered and gibbered, pulling his hair into witches’ locks and turning this way and that in an attempt to get his bearings.

“Where are we?” whispered Genevieve, not daring or even wishing to speak of what had happened to her. She had heard the song of the depths. She had sung it in return. She knew exactly what it was—or what her mother had called it.

“East, a good way,” said Wigham, bracing himself at the rail. “Over the deeps of the Lagoon. Oh, it goes down, here, way down. The sea’s come up over the reefs these last few years, and the coral didn’t close off all the ways between the isles, in any case. Under the coral, deep down, there’s tunnels that go out to the sea.” He paused, as though regretting what he had said, adding as amelioration: “Or so they say.”

Garth called, “There’s the tops of the Mountains of the Tail, away north. They’re just lit by morning.”

Like a rose satin ruching on the skirt of the sky, the stiff folds of the mountains lay against the northwest horizon, extending in a ruffled arc to eastward, where soft-lit satin became saw-toothed iron against the dawn. Wigham, shouting instructions to the two of them, tried to tack back to coastal waters, all to no avail, for the wind pressed them strongly to the southeast as the northern mountains slowly disappeared over the horizon.

“We can wear ourselves out tacking toward the coast,” said Wigham at last, “or we can give in to fate and sail on to the Drowned Range. We’re past half there already, and though it’ll lengthen the journey slightly, it’ll be easier on us and
Unlikely.
There’s anchorage all along the Range on the lee sides of the islands.”

Garth confessed himself ignorant of the geography of the Drowned Range, and it was with some trepidation that he watched out the rest of the morning while the little boat plowed strongly through the waves, leaving a curled wake full of dancing fishes behind her. Genevieve scarcely noticed. In her mind she was still back in the night, clinging to the rail, singing with immensity. What had it meant? Mother had never told her what it meant! Perhaps she, herself, had not known.

“Why are they following us?” Garth asked, pointing to the fishes in the wake.

“They always do that,” called Wigham, from his position at the wheel. “They like looking at us.”

This brought Genevieve to the aft rail, where she looked down at the fish in return, small fat golden fishes with large eyes that faced more front than sideways. Beneath them, never appearing above the water, lay an enormous golden shadow.

“Do you eat that kind?” Garth cried.

Wigham shook his head. “Bad luck to eat that kind.”

Genevieve noticed he had not actually looked at the fish, to see what kind they were. In fact, ever since the chewed rope had been found, he had kept his eyes resolutely away from the water around the boat. She had been going to mention the golden shadow, but thought better of it.

“What kind do you eat?” she called.

“Mostly skinny silver fish of various kinds. And on the reefs there are squeels and nonopuses and saltwater craylets.” His elbow wings flapped several times, telling her she was approaching a forbidden topic.

She asked nothing more. The golden shadow had departed. Except for the small golden fish, there was only water dancing in the wind and throwing sequined light into their eyes, splintered as a shattered mirror. No land showed at all, and only Wigham’s compass told them they still kept to the same course. Genevieve helped prepare and eat a scratched-together luncheon. Hours later, when the fight began to fail, she and Garth again went to the food stores, but within moments Wigham called them on deck to point out a line of foam eastward and a lone light southward, red in the center, with a white beam either side.

“That’s the light at Near Ledge Isle,” cried Wigham. “Hold off supper until we come to anchorage. We’ll sail a little farther east, then turn south to bring us in on the lee side of Ledge Isle, with Far Ledge Isle seaward. You two hold yourselves ready now, and we’ll be at quiet water in the hour.”

As they were, though they were covered with gooseflesh and soaked through before they lay to in a cupped bay of still water opening only to the north. Lacking an anchor, they might float gently ashore, said Wigham, but they could not be driven asea.

“Looky there,” he called. “Water-babies!”

Genevieve leaned on the rail to see the curious creatures swimming below, much like human babies when seen from the back, mostly buttocks and kicking legs, but when they turned over they were froggy things with wide mouths and hair that floated like waterweed. They seemed harmless enough as they circled the boat, swimming on their backs, peering up at the humans, gargling from their wide mouths as though they laughed.

“Those are Haven creatures, are they Wigham?” asked Garth.

“Some say. Some say they’re born to Merdune women who go swimmin’ when they shouldn’t. And when the women’s times come, why then, the midwives deliver
these things, and they run them to the shore, fast as may be, to get them in the water.”

“Surely not!” cried Genevieve, suddenly remembering why Aufors had been so frightened. Poor boy, who had been teased about becoming part-fish and had nightmares as a result!

“Probably not,” corrected Garth. “Though I’ve heard stranger things.”

Wigham flapped his wings and told them to get themselves dried and warm. As for him, he would row ashore with the remnant of the anchor rope and tie
Unlikely
to the rocks, just in case. Then he’d hike himself to the Ledge Isle light and its attendant hamlet, hoping to buy an anchor and a line. Garth said he would go along, as he had never seen the light, so they went, leaving Genevieve to start a fire in the stove and make tea. She poured a cup, generous with the sugar, and drank it while she put together a stew of lamb and potatoes and onions, following directions Garth had given her, sotto voce, earlier in the day.

“Imogene,” he had told her, “would know how to cook, so you must pretend you know.”

Actually, she did know, for she had spent many a holiday afternoon in the Langmarsh kitchen helping Della and the cook. While the stew simmered, she changed into dry clothes, warming her feet by the stove before putting on her boots. Then she wrapped herself well and carried her wet clothes and bowl of stew onto the deck, where she spread the clothes to dry before sitting sleepily on a hatch cover to watch the reflections of the light in the water and listen to the chuckle of the wavelets along the hull as the boat rocked soothingly, well out of the wind.

“Genevieve,” whispered the wavelets. “Come to the rail, Genevieve.”

Obediently, she rose and went to the aft rail, leaning over it to look into the depths. The water-babies were gone. In their place was a shining light, softly golden green, spreading from the area around the boat like a stain that broadened and lengthened until all the little bay was lit with its peridot glow. It came, she thought, from that something huge that lay below and swam in a light of its own, lending that light also to the fat golden fishes that
flowed in linked arcs, like threads being woven into patterned lace. Beneath this filigree the gold of the depths came higher yet, making a brighter circle at the stern of the boat. For a moment, she thought she saw something there, as though the golden stain encompassed an enormous face. Two eyes, this time, and a mouth that could swallow the sea.

The fat fishes continued to swim, the golden light below hung in the water. She stared. The boat rocked.

“Why did you have your fishes chew through the anchor rope?” Genevieve asked drowsily, half-hypnotized by the movement of the creatures.

“Because you do not belong here, Genevieve. Your road is not this one. Your road is the one you are running from. You must keep the oath of your lineage, your promise to your mother. You must go back.”

She heard it clearly in her mind though she was perfectly aware that her ears did not. The golden light pulsed in time with her heart; her vision spun out into it, seeking shape, form, identity. Her heart broke at the words. What spoke? Who spoke?

“Who speaks?” she said.

A line of silver bubble started among the golden filigree, arrowed up at her, lunged from the water and streaked into the air, snatching the rail of the boat as it flew. A shape. Manlike, maybe. Man-sized, certainly, but with a great frill around its head, like a fringed collar, very bright and beautiful. It gripped the railing firmly and said without moving its mouth, “You have heard the harbinger song, Genevieve. You have sung it in reply. You will go with Delganor.”

“No,” she cried aloud, the word skipping on the waves like a stone, splashing up echoes. “No!”

The shining being bobbed its head. Still it did not move its mouth, yet it seemed to say, “You will go with Delganor. It has been long planned that one of Stephanie’s line would go where he goes, see what he sees. You are the one. We have heard your listening. When you sang, we knew you were the one. Your mother saw it. We see it. Stephanie’s line has spread widely, and in you it has come
together. You will follow the necessary way. You will go with Delganor.”

She leaned upon the rail, sick to her heart, the pain spreading outward, through all her body and mind. “Not Delganor.”

The being cocked its head. “Yes. All here hangs in the balance, trembling upon the cusp. You are needed now. Others may be needed later. Return, Genevieve. And call upon us at need upon the sea, Genevieve. Call upon us at need.”

“Who are you?” she cried. “Who are you?”

“A messenger of te wairua taiao,” whispered the being as it left the railing with a sudden slithering motion. The design of fishes broke apart, random golden sparks that swam away in all direction’s. The golden-green glow dropped into the deeper darkness, and Genevieve closed her eyes, then opened them once more. She was leaning on the aft rail. The pain that racked her was real. She stumbled back to her hatch cover, telling herself she had dreamed, but no. Her supper was still quite warm; not enough time had passed to fall into dreaming sleep.

So, she had not dreamed, she had had a vision. Or she had not had a vision, she had actually heard a being speak! Or heard something speak through it, which made more sense. She had seen fat golden fish with a light beneath them, a light that spoke in her mind. A light that knew her by name! That spoke of her lineage, her duty!